No Runs, No Hits, New Era: Baseball Ponders Legal Ways to Increase Offense

The old catcher smiled wryly. The topic was offense, and what could be done to revive it. When John Buck entered professional baseball, in 1998, fans were swooning for sluggers. All these years later, the landscape has tilted. Runs and homers are falling. Strikeouts and infield shifts are soaring. Pitchers rule.

“They wanted it to go back to pitching and defense, didn’t they?” Buck said this spring in Atlanta Braves camp, a few weeks before he retired. “I think it’s a cycle that will go back and forth. If they put the emphasis on improving the offense, they’ll figure a way how.”

The question for Rob Manfred, as he begins his first season as commissioner of Major League Baseball, is whether he should do that. Many hitters would welcome a stimulus package, of sorts, in an age when every new edge seems to benefit pitchers.

The numbers are staggering. Last season, major league teams scored roughly 5,000 fewer runs, and hit roughly 1,500 fewer homers, than they did in 2000 — statistically, the height of the steroid era. The average team scored 4.07 runs per game last season, down from 5.14 in 2000. And pitchers pumped in about 6,000 more strikeouts last season than they did in 2000.

“You can say it’s cyclical, but there’s no way to guarantee that,” said Cleveland Indians outfielder David Murphy, a nine-year veteran. “Maybe the game, as we’re seeing it, is just going to get to this place and refine itself from there.”

But is the place the game is heading a healthy destination? Clearly, the home run feats of the recent past, while romanticized at the time, now stand as a shameful outlier. But runs per game have not been this low, in a nonstrike season, since 1976. Home runs per game have not been this low since 1992.

Baseball expanded in 1977 and 1993, and the influx of previously unqualified pitchers helped stimulate offense. Major League Baseball has no plans to expand now, and while Manfred has shown a willingness to consider many types of changes, he is not sure the game on the field needs to be modified.

“Prince Fielder actually laid down a bunt down the third-base line in a spring training game the other day,” Manfred said in an interview last week, referring to the Texas Rangers’ left-handed slugger, who was attempting to combat a defensive shift. “That kind of epitomizes the question in our minds: Are these great players going to adjust in a way that we don’t have to do anything? That’s the preferred outcome, from our perspective.”

The lowest-scoring season in the last 100 years was 1968, when teams averaged 3.42 runs per game. The next season, which was also an expansion year, baseball lowered the pitcher’s mound. A few years later, in 1973, the American League introduced the designated hitter.

Do not expect any radical changes now. Manfred has no interest in bringing the D.H. to the National League, or in eliminating it altogether. Nobody wants to lower the mound again. With attendance stable — although not rising — and local television ratings strong, Manfred said he did not sense an outcry for changes to promote offense, the way he did to enact the pace-of-play changes that go into effect this season.

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The Nationals' Jordan Zimmermann pitched a no-hitter on Sept. 28 against the Marlins. Last season, major league teams scored roughly 5,000 fewer runs, and hit roughly 1,500 fewer homers, than they did in 2000.CreditAlex Brandon/Associated Press

The committee that oversaw those changes — including a countdown clock between innings — has been folded into a more general competition committee. It will gather quarterly at the owners’ meetings and serve as a think tank for Manfred.

“Once this pace-of-game initiative is implemented and absorbed into the game, the next thing the commissioner will probably address are qualitative aspects of how we play,” said Sandy Alderson, the Mets’ general manager and a committee member. “And we shouldn’t be afraid to consider a variety of things. Other sports do it all the time, tinker with the balance between offense and defense, run production and run prevention. To me, there’s nothing that should be off limits, within reason.”

In some ways, the game came full circle with last fall’s World Series matchup between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals, neither of which had a 30-home run hitter. The last time the Royals had made the World Series, in 1985, the average major league team hit .86 home runs per game. In 2014, the figure was precisely the same.

Dayton Moore, the Royals’ general manager, said he did not consider leaguewide trends when assembling his team; the Royals’ speed-and-defense strategy fit their big ballpark and small payroll. But he does not apologize for their style or lament the demise of the long ball.

“Our team last year was fun to watch,” Moore said. “We had guys running balls down, running balls out, using the speed element. I think that captured the fan base, the speed and athleticism part of it, guys diving all over, putting the ball in play, creating action. That’s exciting.”

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The Yankees performed an infield shift against the Rays last season. In 2011, according to Baseball Info Solutions, teams used fewer than 2,500 shifts on balls in play. Last year they used more than 13,000, and the company said its software actually recommended about 40,000 shifts.CreditBarton Silverman/The New York Times

Moore said baseball needed to continue to find better athletes, but scouts often lament the lack of power bats in the amateur game. Power arms, though, are everywhere. Young pitchers are increasingly raised on sophisticated programs to build velocity, and when they are not firing pure heat, they are sinking and cutting the ball, making it harder for hitters to cover both sides of the plate. The emphasis on speed has led to more pitching injuries, but there are plenty of hard throwers to spare.

The analytical revolution of the early 2000s has also helped pitchers. By the nature of their positions, pitchers control the action while hitters react. A pitcher who can execute a more detailed game plan can make life tougher for a hitter, whose mind-set has changed as teams value a more disciplined approach.

“Part of what’s happening, from a hitting standpoint, is hitters are trying to be more selective, perhaps a little less aggressive than they were 15 years ago, because there are players that are starting to realize, ‘You know, walks are good,’ ” said John Mozeliak, the general manger of the St. Louis Cardinals. “But finding yourself in two-strike counts, some handle it better than others.”

When hitters do make contact, more of their batted balls are turning into outs, gobbled up by infielders deployed in shifts. In 2011, according to Baseball Info Solutions, teams used fewer than 2,500 shifts on balls in play. Last year they used more than 13,000, and the company said its software actually recommended about 40,000 shifts. So there is much more room for teams to buy in.

Manfred caused a stir in January when he told ESPN that he was open to considering a ban on extreme shifts. He said the negative reaction to that comment essentially popped the trial balloon, and most people interviewed for this article responded like Dave Dombrowski, the president of the Detroit Tigers, who said the onus was on hitters to adjust.

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The Braves' Phil Gosselin, right, with Andrelton Simmons after Gosselin struck out with the bases loaded against the Mets on Sept. 21. Pitchers had about 6,000 more strikeouts last season than they did in 2000.CreditDavid Goldman)/Associated Press

Still, some believe Manfred was on to something. The agent Scott Boras, who represents the left-handed sluggers Fielder, Pedro Alvarez and Chris Davis, among other stars, said the shift penalized the kinds of players fans loved to watch.

“How many people have the ability to drive the ball 450 feet?” Boras said. “Fans want that, and we don’t want to take something away from the game that is rare. Bunting is common. Everybody can bunt. So when you have less power and more bunting, our game is less interesting, because we’re not seeing unique performances.”

Power hitters have long been neutralized by matchup relievers, too, but the trend is growing. Games last season averaged six relievers, a record, and Manfred said he was aware of the call in some corners to require a reliever to face more than one hitter at a time.

Like the other ideas, that one has a long way to go to even be considered. In his visits to teams this spring, Manfred said, the emphasis was mostly on the pace-of-play rules. But some players did wonder about possible changes to the strike zone, which is bigger than it used to be, especially in the area below the kneecap. More strikes, naturally, mean more strikeouts.

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Neither the Kansas City Royals nor the San Francisco Giants had a 30-home run hitter last season. Giants fans kept track of Madison Bumgarner's strikeouts during Game 5 of the 2014 World Series.CreditJeff Chiu/Associated Press

“Ultimately, if you want more offense, you’re going to have to shrink the strike zone, which is going to make the pitcher throw to a little bit more neutral location,” said Derek Norris, the San Diego Padres’ catcher. “But umpires are human, they have their zones, and it varies from guy to guy.”

Manfred, though, said he was pleased by the umpires’ collective effort to call a more uniform strike zone. He said veteran baseball people were split on the potential ramifications of a smaller strike zone, and Major League Baseball has no plans to change it.

“I think the strike zone is extremely consistent and it’s not a place I see us tinkering,” Manfred said.

So if the strike zone stays the same, and the league and the players’ union let this era evolve without rule changes, how can teams generate more offense? Not chemically. Among the substances baseball now tests for are amphetamines, the drug many players used for decades to handle the grind of the long schedule.

Testing for amphetamines began in 2006, and coincidentally or not, that was the year strikeouts began their annual ascent. The total has climbed each year since, and batters last season struck out nearly 7,000 more times than they did in 2005. Banning amphetamines affects position players more than starting pitchers, the thinking goes, because hitters play so many more games in a season.

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The Diamondbacks defeated the Reds, 2-1, in 15 innings on July 28. The average team scored 4.07 runs per game last season, down from 5.14 runs per game in 2000.CreditJoe Robbins/Getty Images

Testing for amphetamines may have diminished consecutive-game streaks, which have become something of a relic. The longest active streak belongs to the Giants’ Hunter Pence, at 387, and he will start the season on the disabled list. Teams like Oakland and Baltimore have emphasized the use of deeper rosters, and more general managers are seeing the wisdom of platoons.

“You’re seeing them more and more,” the Angels’ Jerry Dipoto said. “So you’re not expecting one player to go out, like Jimmy Rollins, and have 700-plate-appearance seasons. We’re not placing those types of expectations on a player anymore. We’re trying to augment them with other well-balanced pieces on a roster.”

Dipoto, who pitched in the majors from 1993 to 2000, said he remembered clubhouse lounges with doughnuts and Cap’n Crunch. Now, he said, the Angels send menus ahead to visiting clubhouse managers in hope that their players eat healthy on the road.

The Cardinals take two team days off in spring training, Mozeliak said, and each player gets another day off. The Seattle Mariners, the Miami Marlins and other teams now use luxury planes to make travel a little easier.

“There’s room to move around in the front and the back, and I think our players enjoyed that a lot,” said Jack Zduriencik, the Mariners’ general manager. “We’ve brought people in to talk to our group about sleep, and we’ll do that again. Everyone is engaging in new science with a lot of different things.”

The areas of emphasis are changing, but teams, of course, will always seek ways to gain an edge. Players will, too, but the drug culture that once led to an offensive boom is mostly gone. Thousands of runs and homers have gone with it, but baseball — for now — can live with that.

“You have to get rid of performance-enhancing drugs, because they are a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred said. “And whatever the game looks like with players playing clean is what the game looks like.”